Touch Is
by The Perfect Drain
Summary: Gryffindor observations... and I'm kind of hating summaries at the moment. Feedback always appreciated.


Seamus saw them touching.  

He had to stop himself from sighing in relief, because they were too close and they might hear and wonder and they were _touching.  Dean had his hand on Neville's shoulder, a slight smile and a totally innocent comforting gesture because Potions had been hard earlier that day, and it was just that it was the last thing Seamus had ever expected to see.  He smiled and realized -_

Sometimes Seamus would think about this strange thing.  Gryffindors were brave and outgoing and slapped their teammates and their roommates on the back for a job well done.  They were comfortable in themselves and the world, and this year of Gryffindors was just a mistake, a _strange thing.  Real Gryffindors didn't cringe from other people's hands or their own.  But instead here they were, Gryffindor freaks and the people everyone wanted to be, aspired to be (Harry Potter is afraid of hugs) and they couldn't stand brushing up against each other by accident._

Dean told himself that touching others without their permission was an invasion of personal space.  That's the way he had always taken it when his uncle had hugged him and pinched him and laughed and thought he was being loving, though his parents touched him too (and with more familiarity), and that was okay because they had the right to because they were his parents and he loved them and they loved him, and they were the only people he knew wouldn't mind him near.  It was to be expected.  But then he saw –

Neville always wanted to be comforted.  He thought it made him weak in the other's eyes, but then he realized that all the other boys were –

Ron was afraid.  He'd never really tried to comfort someone before and he thought he'd be a complete ass at it, but when Harry was upset over his mum's death (yet again, he knew, but it was worse each time), it made his heart bunch up until he knew he could only make both their pains stop in one way and just reached out and – 

Harry flinched, expecting a blow (snap out of it you whiney little boy, snap out of it goddammit) but when Ron's hand came to rest on his back, gently, timidly, it was like whatever was holding him up just collapsed.  He fell back against Ron with a strangled noise, tears winding down his face, gasping for breath past his sobs and hoping and hoping that he'd just _snap out -_

Seamus saw it first at the Quidditch matches.  Afterward there'd be hugs and slaps on the back, and everytime they did that to Harry (which was quite a bit) he seemed to get a little smaller (and he was already towered over by the other players dammit) and a little more false.  (Don't you just love his grin oh my god Seamus heard the girls say and couldn't help but think they'd never really _looked.)  One time it just got to be too much to watch, and Seamus wormed himself into the crowd next to Harry and held his arm around him, just enough to ward off the others slightly and not enough to touch.  Harry'd never mentioned it afterwards, but that was okay, because Seamus didn't want him to._

Dean almost wrenched himself away from Neville, realizing his own action, but stopped himself.  His hand stayed on Neville's shoulder until he turned around and hugged Dean tightly.  Dean winced, but then tentatively hugged back.  Neville didn't know exactly how to hug Dean, because only his parents knew that, but then, Neville had never hugged him before.  It was to be expected.

Neville had been the recipient of more halfhearted touches than he cared to remember.  He often thought something about him just screamed _comfort__ me and he sometimes wasn't sure if he liked that or not.  They just felt obligated, he thought, and it wasn't just a need to comfort.  Neville wanted to be comforted and he wanted people to actually __want to comfort him, he finally decided.  (And sometimes it was the only way he felt useful.)  _

Seamus had once knocked into Dean, totally by accident.  Dean had just turned and looked at him, and Seamus had blushed and not been able to stop apologizing.  He told himself that it was because he knew Dean wasn't comfortable with being touched, and tried not to think that it might be that he himself wasn't comfortable with touching.  Seamus had _touched, and Dean had just turned and looked at him – then he had smiled and assured Seamus that he was his best friend, and that statement had been the end of the matter.  _

Ron could only think that Harry's parents would've held him a whole lot better.

Harry could only think that at the moment that didn't really matter.

Seamus could finally hope for changing, because everything was starting to change anyway.

Touch is a funny thing, Dean started to say to himself, it's not quite a gift and not quite a curse but it can be both.  Everyone uses it in different ways, and everyone takes it in different ways.  _Touch is a fickle thing like love and hate, like movement and speech, Dean thought, __it's just like them.  And then he said it out loud, and oddly enough, everyone listened._


End file.
